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Opinion Contributor

Repeal the Office of Financial Research

Congress created this office as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the author writes. | AP Photo

By REP. FRANCISCO CANSECO | 6/19/12 9:38 PM EDT

Just when cases of identity theft are increasing, an obscure but powerful government bureaucracy, particularly susceptible to cyberattack, stands ready to begin stockpiling private financial information and monitoring confidential financial transactions.

This new bureaucracy — the innocuous sounding Office of Financial Research — is described as “a hacker’s dream and a civil libertarian’s nightmare” in our committee report because it lacks accountability and oversight and stores so much sensitive financial information in one place.

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Congress created this office as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the 2,300-page behemoth supposed to end “too big to fail” and save the U.S. from the next financial crisis. Yet today, banks “too big to fail” when President Barack Obama signed Dodd-Frank are now even bigger. The notion that this law can anticipate the events that will lead to the next crisis has been derided, as The Economist recently did, as “delusional.”

This office has received relatively little public attention — unlike the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the other independent agency created by Dodd-Frank.

Yet it warrants closer scrutiny. We learned, during two House Financial Services Committee hearings, that this office can raise its own money, spend as much as it wants and use subpoena power to fill its massive computer database with whatever information it deems necessary.

The office’s scope, mission, cost and intrusiveness are limited only by the imagination of the unelected bureaucrat that is ultimately selected to lead it.

OFR “may decide that it needs to monitor the transfers that we make among bank accounts,” Hester Peirce, a former Securities and Exchange Commission counsel, recently wrote, “the type of insurance we are buying, our ATM withdrawals, and the rate at which we are paying off our credit card debt and car loans. The only limit on this power is the self-restraint of the director, who has ‘sole discretion’ over how to do his job.”

Testimony from expert witnesses and from OFR’s acting director and chief operating officer revealed that the office spent $33 million last year. It is spending $122 million this year and plans to spend at least $158 million in 2013.

The office is allowed, under Dodd-Frank, to take this money directly from the Federal Reserve until July 2012. After that, it can raise its own funding by assessing a tax on financial companies — a cost that will most likely be passed on to consumers.

It's true that the banksters will probably always be able to stay two steps ahead of regulators in concealing their financial shenanigans. And even if fraudulent gambling is uncovered, probably no president, Democrat or Republican, will ever take any steps to rein in or embarrass their Wall Street friends.

But isn't it just possible that if there had been anyone in government paying any attention to the subprime/credit default scams of 2001-2008, there might possibly have been some whistleblowing that could have slowed it down a little bit?

That may be the best we can hope for -- but Rep Canseco and his bankster friends don't want to allow ANY oversight of the financial world.

"But isn't it just possible that if there had been anyone in government paying any attention to the subprime/credit default scams of 2001-2008, there might possibly have been some whistleblowing that could have slowed it down a little bit?"

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Um... the original schemers in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco (which bankers initially wanted nothing to do with)...

and the ones who promised to back the sub-prime mortgages (when bankers were brow-beat into lending against their better judgement) through the quasi-government lenders-of-last-resort => Fannie and Freddie (the first dominoes to tip)....

and the ones who then wrote the solution to the mess they created, producing this unregulated, double-secret ,regulatory agency with no over-sight what-so-ever, collecting data on us all are... ready for this:

Dodd and Frank... yeah, that's right. Same crooks every step of the way

Like the NYT, whose incompetence is forcing them out of business we have plenty of agencies that should go as well. WE need a thorough house cleaning! WE need to dump AGENCIES and DEPARTMENTS WE need to make government smell good again!

Let's think about this, if Canseco believes that the gov't can independently go out and solicit funds for research, who is going to fund them, certainly not the banking institutions who like to play with "other's people money". To follow his illogical premise, he wants taxpayer's to fund a government agency, which we already do, via taxes. Never fear, he is a teaparty repub who hopes to baffle you with bull-pucky.

Here is a guy, who loaned his campaign money, which is fine and dandy. But how many congresscritter's had the audacity to actually charge their own campaign interest. Yep, he makes money from his campaign committee by not paying off the loan.

According to Legistorm, he personally pocketed $987.00 during the last quarter on the dollars donated to his campaign - now folks who donate to him are essentially paying him twice. But, it's all good as he seems to believe that if we don't know or care about this small amount, then it is obvious that all citizen's would be fine with this ploy on a grander scale.